Professor Todd Humphreys and his team from the University of Texas at Austin's Radionavigation Laboratory recently demonstrated the ease with which hackers can take over drones that rely on GPS signals. The ability to control a flying unmanned aircraft by spoofing the GPS signal should come as no surprise, considering it was used against the United States by Iran. In that instance, the U.S. drone was tricked into simply landing where the Iranian hackers wanted it.

According to the University of Texas team, there is a concern that compromised drones could be turned into weapons. The FAA is set to open skies over the United States to drone fleets for different uses including surveillance by law enforcement officials.

Humphreys opines, "Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane."

The scary part of the demonstration given by the professor and his team is that anyone with the right tools can take over the GPS-guided drone. Spoofing is when technology is used against drone that is able to manipulate navigation computers with false information that the drone sees as real. Humphreys and his team used what they call the most advanced spoofer ever built, and it costs only $1,000 to construct.

The GPS spoofer is able to send signals to the flying drone that are stronger than those from GPS satellites in orbit. The attack Humphreys demonstrated begins by matching the signal of the GPS system so the drone believes nothing has changed. Once the drone is fooled into following his GPS signal, his own commands are sent to the onboard computer, giving the team complete control of the drone.

Humphreys told Fox News, "In 5 or 10 years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace. Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us."

Humphreys and his team made a trip to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico where officials from the FAA and the Department of Homeland Security watched as Humphrey and his team repeatedly took control of over a drone from a nearby hilltop. The Department of Homeland Security is currently working with researchers like Humphreys and others to identify and mitigate the possibility of GPS interference.

When I worked for a DoD contractor, all this stuff was negotiated in the contract. If the Army wanted to add encryption, we'd price out how much it would cost and give them a quote. If they didn't like the price, they'd either seek out another company for the contract, or opt for no encryption. You build what they ask you to build. No more, no less. Sometimes we'd make suggestions or recommendations, but the decision whether or not to implement them was totally up to the Army.

Adding encryption would eat into the power budget too - which might be limited based on the battery carrying capacity of the infantrymen - so, the Army might simply not want your encryption-loaded device if that means the infantry must carry another 10 pounds of batteries.